Dan Mayer's Blog

what do you think you were born to do? I always wonder what my calling really is. It seems creativity is my main talent, but many ideas i have might not be profitable at all... others would cost far to much to ever figure it out they would work out.

So why do I have such a hard time just testing out and working on my ideas? I come home have time think i will work after dinner, but no I just watch a movie or TV and I get nothing done... then I wake up and I am like shit I wasted another day.... So how do you motivate yourself on the things you care about... when your content... I mean when your upset about a situation it is easy to motivate yourself to change it, but when your well enough and content, it is hard to motivate yourself to push through and work harder...

What motivates you?

as I had a very odd and vivid dream I decided that I would share it with everyone cause it is brief, and makes no logical sense to me... anyways here it is:

I was camping with Cara Ring and Doc, we were in black sleeping bags and trying to hid from something, but Cara and Doc kept fitting over the time to set the alarm either 9:00 am or 9:05 am and kept making me change it backa nd forth and I was getting angry. I told them it didnt matter and that it was just five minutes and they kept bickering finally after i had changed it back and forth a bunch they comprimised at 9:03 am when I sat up and got the top of myself out of the sleeping bag and to pick up the alarm I saw it, A velociraptor had seen me and was darting towards me, I used my last words to tell them, "damn you the time didn't matter", at which the velocaraptor bit me in two right above the hips... and ran off with my upper body.

i wish i could spell.... thoughts on my dream?

Well I hadn't played for a long time, but a friend Matt has been getting me back into it lately, we played a ton of games and tore some enemies up. Starcraft is a great game that is still what I like to call a larger more complex game of chess. Anyways, I have loved going back and playing some games.

I also built my first example app using the rails framework, which is for the ruby language. Ruby is definately cool, and ruby on rails was really pretty impressive, althought it seems alot of the features and functions of rails exist in many other languages, they just made everything about using the framework far simpler, you dont have to do all this manual self configuring, using XML config files that get so large and nasty that you have them all over the place, instead rails does all the basic configuration and file layout for you and only when your try to extend past the expected functionality do you have to worry about writing anything. It gives you the ability to build full blogs in minutes. Neato. I have just the little project I have always wanted to do that this seems well suited for and a good way to learn more about Ruby.

currently reading: Secret life of Howard Hughes

I cant spell worth anything, but i believe I found a word that i have been misspelling almost my whole life...

I have always put quite, when I mean quiet...

Shhhh it is the library be quite... I used to say..

I now know it is

Shhh it is the library be quiet...

Damn how have i lived this long with out choking on a pretzel.

Well the inevitable happened. I was pulled over for speeding this morning on the way to work. I was 22 over the speed limit, and this cop showed no leniency, probably partially because I didn�t have a drivers license on me. I left my in a bar awhile ago, and have since been missing the license� So the first time I am ever pulled over, no leniency (it would have been nice to be moved under the 20 mph threshold) and a mandatory court date, So I wont know how much the ticket is for awhile. Anyways, it was bound to happen eventually. I was about 1 year and two month short of my goal of reaching 25 with out ever being pulled over hopefully this wont raise my insurance or start a trend. If I was paying attention I would have seen him for awhile and been able to slow down, but who is awake at 8:50 am I want to sleep, I am half asleep... oh well

Yarrgggg this isn�t the start of a good day. I knew I shouldn�t have gotten out of bed this morning.

I have been learning the language ruby, and have begun playing around with ruby on rails. Which is a development framework for web based applications. I have been really impressed with ruby on rails so far, I was worried about how extendable it would be to less general problems, but it seems to be fairly extendable. Which is cool. I highly recommend giving it a shot and I think this was the best tutorial I have gone through while learning ruby.

Ruby on rails tutorial, building a cookbook

I also recommend Agile web development with Rails, from the Pragmatic Programmers

Well I am done with the Rocky Mountain Software Symposium (RMSS), No Fluff just Stuff. Which was excellent. I learned a ton I wish I could go to one of these ever 3 to 6 months... Anyways I learned alot and have some great stuff that I can put into use on my projects at work. I also learned a ton of just really cool and interesting stuff. That will make me a better programmer all the time, as well as get me moving on new technologies faster than others. Anyways, it was really cool and interesting. Hopefully I will get to use and play with some of the code before i forget all of the cool stuff that i just learned... check the new RSS feed reader that is on the front of wastedbrains to see something I coded up real quick...

I highly recommend the no fluff just stuff tour to everyone.

Well I am done with the Rocky Mountain Software Symposium (RMSS), No Fluff just Stuff. Which was excellent. I learned a ton I wish I could go to one of these ever 3 to 6 months... Anyways I learned alot and have some great stuff that I can put into use on my projects at work. I also learned a ton of just really cool and interesting stuff. That will make me a better programmer all the time, as well as get me moving on new technologies faster than others. Anyways, it was really cool and interesting. Hopefully I will get to use and play with some of the code before i forget all of the cool stuff that i just learned... check the new RSS feed reader that is on the front of wastedbrains to see something I coded up real quick...

I highly recommend the no fluff just stuff tour to everyone.

FU sony... If your robbed you have to erase your music... sony can and will install back doors on your machine... if you loose the CD you must delete your music, if you travel outside of your resident country delete your music...

Um hell no, and I never agreed to any of that 3,000 word EULA just by open a legally purchased CD and putting it in my computer...

Sony EULA from hell

Yeah i want to buy one of these disks and put it in one of my old machines, just so i will be able to participate in a class action lawsuite that is being put together in new york and california.

At the same time the punishments are being increased for copyright violations, how aoubt computer fraud which the sony copy protection installed on the disk completes? I would like that violation to be far increase where sony will probably pay out about half of the PROFITS it made as a fine...

Sony, I will avoid buying anything from you, no playstation 3 no matter what it does... I would far rather deal with some of the crap microsoft does than to deal with you...

now i just need to figure out what movies to avoid that are related to sony.

i just got the original Star Wars trilogy and the Ultimate Matrix (10 dvds) collection on DVD....

I could be unproductive and useless for days if I wanted... I will try to stretch it all out though. Cause well I should be accomplishing more than just watching tv and movies in my free time...

Like tomorrow I will be getting a hair cut, new tires, drivers liscence, and various other chores done...

Man my mind is warn the hell out.

with the sony stuff happening and many other things... then i finally saw that match.com is tricking their users... how can anyone trust any company anymore... the biggest profit house lie and cheat and because of it they make more money and they are never punished.

Match.com sends romantic emails to their users from employees to keep them subscribing longer...

man talk about getting your hopes up...

Welll it is like we never learn from the past or, read any history in the last 100 years and see it reoccuring all the time through our minds in diferent situations.

I guess i guess i finished with my howard hughes stuff and i am on to something scarier... so read your history and change the future...

what do you really know?

George Carlin when talking about getting rid of semetaries as they are wastefull useless and outdated....Plowing through them we need that phoporous for farming...

"People talk about recycling, let's get serious..."

anyways it cracked me up guess you had to be there...

Oh yeah I really liked the movie Derailed, it was pretty suprising and well done. I thought it was a little slow at a couple parts, but over all it was great with a good ending... I chose to see this movie.

Well i introduced a bunch of friends and my email list to stumble upon, and now i have another pretty cool site/service for you. This one wont interest everyone quite as much, but i still think it will interest some of you, especially the links page which is off the front page. The site is called Digg.com and is mostly for techine stuff, but has some cool other stuff as well. Anyways, go over sign up an account and start recommenind sites you like or saying you dig them if they are already there.

Digg links

I added the flobots to the digg site to try to promote some of their music, because the entire old Flobots hip hop album as free mp3s which is pretty cool.

Nicole I almost named this post HAHAHA again just to anger you... i realized moments after i posted last time that i had the same title twice but it just cracked me up. Also, reading through the whole Howard Hughes book messes with your head.

Happy thanksgiving everyone... I hope you have a great day with family or friends. I am in colorado this year spending the day with some friends and the weekend in vail skiing.

peace out,
Dan "Turkey Burger" Man

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Alright well I had an incredible thanksgiving break... I will give the quick and short version...

Wendsday after work out with co workers party it down till late night... luckly we leave Market 41 about 10 mins before four people were shot at the bar... Yeah Lucky we left I didnt want to witness or be involved in my first shooting.

Thursday Turkey day... Wait for my friend Pilot Steve (Formerly Air Force Steve), to show up, then go buy a 19 lb free range turkey, pack up for skiing in vail, find gear for trip, buy some booze... pre party out to the bars... Good times were had by all... except our wallets which suffered that night.

Friday up early out to vail. Skiing with almost no lines, it was great. (Except breaking in my new boots was really painfull) Met up with Jesse and skiied some runs with him... Steve, Jesse, and I ski till the lifts close, then take off to Matt's place in Vail to cook up the Turkey. We start cooking that up (which will take 3 1/2 hours to bake) and play video games, watch movies, build a fire. We run around cutting up every piece of fire wood we could and we have a blast doing it... Matt's place was trashed when we got there and actually cleaner after we left.

Saturday chill in vail grab lunch in the mountains, chill around my place in denver... Finally waking up enough to get ready and head out for saturday night downtown, Steve and I are on a mission to meet some girls...mission accomplished... but who knows if a number leads anywhere...

Sunday chill, relax, and work on some web stuff... Sleep in... yeaahhh

Monday get back to work which sucks, but while cooking Dinner Steve decides we need to go to the Nuggets game. So we grab some cheap scalped tickets and we are in our seats to watch the Nuggets get destroyed by the New Jersey Nets, but it was a good game, and fun anyways...

Well that ends my fun for a good while... Steve will still be around for a bit, but I have some big deadlines to make at work, so I will be busy with that which isn't near as fun as runnning around town with my friend Steve.

Also for those that remember I used to love BUSH i never even heard when they broke up but, Gavin (the lead) made a new band called Institute and I just got their first album, so far it has enough of the BUSH sound that I like it, so if you liked BUSH check out INSTITUTE, Distort Yourself...

This is the sad state of the movie industry... when things like this happen, they still profit millions, and spend their time trying to restrict how we used purchased movies (I still can't easily put a DVD i own on my pocket pc, it is easier to steal a copy off the net of something I own and put it on my Pocket PC)

basically Superman V has been in the works for over a decade, with so much money being poured and dumped into it... All by people that HATE superman and comics... I wonder if the success of Batman Begins, will show them that if you actually make a comic movie based of why people like the comic it will turn out far better, than just STEALING the superman name, and making a movie that has nothing to do with Superman... Read on for what will make you like Tim Burton far less (who i have always loved, but is so creative he shouldnt ever mess with other peoples original ideas (which is why i have avoided Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) (Nicole read the article before getting mad cause you like Tim Burton as much as I did)) and will make you like Nicolas Cage more... for refusing to be in a Superman movie (who's comics he loved, that Destroyed what Superman is). Even Justine Timberlake turned down the role saying that it destroyed Superman... (Props to Kevin Smith for dropping hopes on it as well)

Superman V: The Whole Sordid Saga

So I was starting to wonder why we accept such mediocrity from everything... I like some shows, but I always have to accept certain things in them that are horribly flawed... All the shows you watch, movies you see, and music you listen to is created to appeal to the largest cross section of people, which I dont think matches well with most peoples personal tastes...

I guess i have just been getting sick of seeing everything be lowered to the common denominator lately... but is there a way to fight back?

(This was also set off by the episode of HOUSE last night, which I have normally liked and the last few episodes have been bringing it to a less interesting and more mundane quality...)

back to work... XML sucks!